Jonathan Pollard Biography

Jonathan Jay Pollard was a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who admitted to spying for Israel and was sentenced in 1987 to life in prison. He was released on parole in 2015, after serving 30 years behind bars. Pollard was a 1976 Stanford University graduate who dropped out of Tufts Law School in 1979 and applied for a job with the CIA. Rejected for being emotionally unstable, he nonetheless landed a job with the Navy as a researcher, and in 1984 was assigned as an analyst at the Navy’s Anti-Terrorist Alert Center in Maryland, with clearances and access to sensitive materials.

A longtime supporter of Israel, Pollard spent about 17 months turning over top secret U.S. documents to Israeli intelligence agents in exchange for cash and jewelry. He was captured in 1985 and pleaded guilty to espionage, then sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole in 2015. Pollard is the only American spy to be given a life sentence for passing classified information to an ally, and his case has become a cause célébre. His supporters argue that his sentence was too harsh, and that Pollard has been used as a bargaining chip over the years in negotiations between the United States, Palestine and Israel.

His case also became the source of rancor between factions in the U.S. intelligence community and the State Department; when President Bill Clinton was considering releasing Pollard to Israel in 1995, CIA Director George Tenet threatened to resign — the CIA has long argued that Pollard’s spying severely damaged U.S. operations. Despite Israeli offers to take Pollard, the United States kept him incarcerated in North Carolina until he was paroled.